


Deleted

by Bug_Catcher_In_Viridian_Forest



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Soulmate - Deleted blogs, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-29 05:26:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13920327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bug_Catcher_In_Viridian_Forest/pseuds/Bug_Catcher_In_Viridian_Forest
Summary: Soulmate AU where confetti burst on your screen and both your blogs get deleted when you become mutuals on Tumblr.





	1. Deleted

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I am a sucker for soulmates AUs, so you finally get my own version.

Across the centuries, the soulbound had manifested in ever-changing ways. This supernatural force, running throughout the universe and connecting the fate of those born intended to spend their life together, had always been known for adapting to the customs of the lands and staying updated to the times.

In ancient China, where the economy was famously characterized by the production of silk, an invisible red thread, tied to the ankles, was meant to lead a set of soulmates to their first encounter. In the mystical atmosphere of medieval Europe, soulmates would meet in the realm of dreams before chancing upon one another in their waking hours.

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, globalization and the advent of the internet had completely revolutionized the mechanism; whether you lived in Beijing or Paris, the odds were that you would discover the identity of your perfect match thanks to a new unprecedented method. When you became mutuals with your soulmate on social media, a shower of digital confetti would burst on your screen and both your blogs would get deleted. The experts said that the termination of one’s account was meant to encourage the two parties involved to seek each other in real life, instead of relying on long-distance communication. As for the parties involved, they often lamented the impracticality of this expectation, as many of them did not have the means to move permanently or to travel with frequence, so much that it was predicted that the soulbound would once again alter its way of manifesting itself in the course of a few years.

Despite the forecasted adjustment, a whole generation was nevertheless finding itself operating under the described rules and it was to that generation that four-time consecutive figure skating world champion Victor Nikiforov belonged.

At the age of twenty-six, after a night spent together in Sochi, dancing and laughing, at the annual banquet held to celebrate the end of the Grand Prix Final, Victor Nikiforov had followed fellow competitor Yuuri Katsuki on the popular multimedia blogging platform Bluehll and his account had got deleted.

Having Victor at the time more than two hundred thousand followers, the deletion of his blog hardly went unnoticed. It was a matter of seconds before the logical question surfaced in his tag and a matter of minutes before it starred in the headlines of news outlets. “Has long-time bachelor Victor Nikiforov finally found his soulmate?” The press asked, already spurring their readers to guess their identity.

The world champion remained silent.

 

When Victor had first returned to Saint Petersburg, his hometown and training site, the day after the end of the Grand Prix Final and the banquet, he had wasted no time before he started researching the charming performer with whom he had got better acquainted the previous night. He dropped on the couch, with his pet poodle cuddled on his legs and his laptop open, then entered the other skater’s name on the search bar. He had of course been aware of Yuuri Katsuki as a rising star from Japan and he had admired the graceful ways in which his body moved along with the music, but they had never found each other one against another in the same competition and little he had known of the his engaging personality. Although, at first, Yuuri appeared to be quite shy, he had soon revealed to be a smart, sweet, funny and decidedly festive individual and the night had yet to come to a conclusion when Victor realized he was on his way to develop a huge crush for the guy.

Although they hadn’t really had the opportunity to be introduced and talk to each other during the competition, they had immediately hit it off on the very last day, when Victor had joined Yuuri in a playful dance-off between the skaters informally held in the middle of the banquet room. When the show had become too wild for the other attendees and they had become too tired for dancing, they had relocated to a calmer corner in the balcony, where they had chatted about their love for figure skating and their appreciation for dogs, poodles in particular. Yuuri had confessed, with a timid smile, of having been a fan of Victor since the latter’s junior years. On Yuuri’s initiative, they had held hands looking at the stars and the city lights below them. Yesterday night had been a beautiful night.

A couple of hours was spent rewatching all of Yuuri Katsuki’s available programs and another couple scrolling through the contained amount of entries on his Bluehll blog. Yuuri’s posts where few, but informative, mostly pertaining to figure skating, music or gaming. Typing his name on the search function also returned a collection of broken-link sourced screenshots, which revealed a tendency on Yuuri’s part to remove shorter, wittier remarks.

The next stage was to click on that rectangular grey button bearing the word ‘Follow’. Even in his mindlessness, Victor was filled with trepidation, as if he could subconsciously anticipate the weight of the life-altering action he was about to execute. Still, on a conscious level, his thoughts were very distant from the concept of soulmates and very focused on the memory of Yuuri Katsuki’s soft face, so that, when he eventually pressed the finger on the left side of the mouse, he was in fact extremely surprised when he was redirected to his dashboard and a bunch of colourful confetti started covering the page. After a few moments, a message appeared on screen:

“Congratulation, your blog has been deleted!”

Under the message stood “Next” as the only option, which Victor proceeded to confirm, finding himself at the Bluehll login page, unable to log back. The link to his profile was empty and his personal email address resulted also available for registration; the entirety of his blog was gone.

Victor was more baffled than anything. Fingers in his hair, he raised from the couch to retrieve his phone and see if changing device would allow him to access his blog, to no avail. What had just happened? He was already preparing make a new account to contact Bluehll’s staff when he remembered that that’s how the soulbound elects to manifest itself these days. Three decades ago people would be born with the first sentence their soulmate would say to them tattooed on their wrist, but those kind of birthmarks had gradually started to disappear and this was what his generation turned up to have to deal with.

But did any of this matter? The beautiful, charming Yuuri Katsuki was his soulmate and they had found one another. They were made for one another, to skate together on the smooth ice and turn their feet at the rhythm of the music, their hearts beating in synch. Compared to this prospect, the loss of a few pictures, which had no doubt been reblogged thousands of times by his followers, was of no consequence.

The revelation had suddenly got him hungry and dizzy; soup is what he needed to think through the next steps. He went to the kitchen and laid out the cookware and the ingredients. This would be simple. He would have to move to Japan, Victor determined while chopping the potatoes, possibly next spring, after the World Championships, when he was planning to take a year off from competitive skating. He could become Yuuri’s coach, as the two of them had merrily joked the night before. All that remained to do now was waiting for the soup to be ready and getting in touch with his intended.

Except he could not do that, with both their accounts deleted. Victor did not hesitate to create another one, but he had checked and double-checked, and Yuuri and not remade his own account yet. It was possible that Yuuri was at the moment unable to connect to the internet or that he had fallen asleep due to the after-effects of the previous week’s demanding activities. Or maybe Yuuri had just the kind of romantic disposition which preferred to respect the decisions taken by the soulbound and forgo his presence on social media. In any case, there still was no need to panic; after escorting Yuuri to his hotel bedroom and before parting ways from him at the door, Victor had saved his own number on Yuuri’s phone and left with the promise of being contacted once they had returned to their respective countries. When his soulmate would get around to calling him, they would be able to discuss their bond and arrange another meeting.

Victor filled his poodle’s bowl with a fresh portion and sat at the table to enjoy his lunch, basking in the hope of a future filled with love and companionship.

Later that day, his messenger apps erupted in a flow of ‘Who are they?’s. Victor could not understand how they were not able to see who they were. Only one would do for him, still the concurrent disappearance of Yuuri’s smaller blog went largely unnoticed, at least as far as western media was concerned. Only a few, sparse fringe observers correctly theorized on the identity of his soulmate, but not enough for the news to be picked up on a larger scale.

Despite the unending stream of notifications and requests for interviews, the day passed without any contact from Yuuri himself and Victor retired to bed with a tinge of worry staining the colours of his hopefulness.

The following morning, he could not wait any longer. He risked asking Christophe Giacometti, a common acquaintance and rival skater, who also had competed in the Grand Prix Final and attended the banquet, for Yuuri’s telephone number. The man promptly replied, “So that’s who they are ;)” and made no difficulties in releasing the information.

Victor sent a first, tentative text, keeping it light and avoiding any mention of the matter of soulmates, not wanting to pressure Yuuri more than the media surely already had. The message went unanswered.

Christophe assured Victor that he had given him the correct number and that Yuuri had replied to his meme within twenty minutes, not that long earlier. It was also Christophe’s opinion that, being Yuuri a shy person and a great fan of Victor’s, maybe he just needed some time undisturbed to process the situation.

Victor left it at that for a full week and tried to get on with his daily routine. He went to practice, he walked his dog and enjoyed himself with a bit of unnecessary shopping, until his own need to hear from Yuuri became consuming. Was his soulmate not interested in talking to him? Was Yuuri mad because he hadn’t backed up his gaming meta and all his carefully constructed analysis had been lost forever? These were possible explanations for his behaviour. Yuuri’s feelings regarding their bond were as important as his own and he wouldn’t push him into entering a relationship he didn’t want just because, one day, Bluehll shoot a bunch of confetti on their dashboards and erased their blog from its servers. He wouldn’t force him to be interested in him romantically or be interested in him at all, but soulmates were too important a business to risk losing your own due to a misunderstanding. He had to hear the truth from Yuuri’s mouth. With his heart in his throat, he tapped on Yuuri’s avatar in his telephone and initiated a phone call. The device fell from his shaking hand when he discovered that the one he was craving to spend his life with had his number blocked.

Still in his pyjama, Victor started frantically pacing is his living room, causing even his normally tranquil poodle to become alarmed. Again and again, he tried to make the call go through. He asked more than once for Chris to make sure he had been given the correct number.

Victor did not kid himself, only one reason could make his soulmate terminate the only line of communications they had left and that reason was that Yuuri wanted nothing to do with Victor. After all, what had Victor to offer beside his skills as a skater? He was no relationship material and that was also why he hardly had any friends. Yuuri had put up with his advances for one evening, but both of them had been a bit drunk and Yuuri had definitely been emotionally vulnerable. Any pleasantries that might have trespassed between them were not the reflection of his current wishes and evidently went over a boundary that his sober self wasn’t comfortable with.

He called in sick and skipped practice. That would have required changing out of his bedclothes and getting something substantial to eat, when he felt like channelling all of his residual the energy into sorting out the unexpected blow he had just received. Slouched on the couch, just like the day his blog got deleted, he held is phone to his heart and decided his next move. Some dozen clicks and thousands of words later, he had anonymously signed up to an array of forums for soulbond relationship advice. Some of the replies were optimistic, others less so.

“If he’s from another country, this must be the result of a cultural miscommunication.” A user said. “This is a bit behind-the-times, but, in my culture, the older person (or in some cases the person who followed last with the new system) is expected to first ask the parents of their intended for the permission to court them. Younger generations are known to dismiss this kind of formalities, then again you’ll always find some who have been raised in old-fashioned families.”

So, Victor researched Japanese traditions revolving around soulmates. The Wikipedia article was not as developed as he would have wished and there was a general lack of non-Japanese sources about the subject on the web. What he did understand was that soulmates were considered a very delicate topic, which was expected to go unspoken until the involved parties made an official declaration, and that, as for most Asian countries, the red string of fate remained, until recently, the primary method of finding your soulmate. The invisible scarlet threads often resurfaced to connect intended partners even in this technological age; it could be that Yuuri was just disappointed of not been allowed to experience the traditional custom of his nation in favour of a trivial, foreign and notoriously controversial process.

Victor’s eyes shot opened when they read the most creative take of the lot.

“It could be that you and your soulmate have set a precedent in the manifestation of soulbonds.” Veteran poster CiaoCiaoマーク said. “What, if from now on, not only people’s blogs get deleted when they become mutuals, but they also get each other blocked in all other platforms? Sometimes the Bond behaves just like a troll.”

Raised on his elbows, Victor quickly checked the list of his blocked contacts. There was none newer than last November’s unrelenting fan who had got hold of his personal number due to the carelessness of a previously trusted journalist. Surprisingly, he was a bit relieved. He couldn’t bear the thought of darling, sensitive Yuuri being left to believe that Victor had intentionally blocked him.

“Maybe he already had another soulmate who is not keen on sharing.” Another user supplied. This could also be true and the idea was so heart breaking that Victor impulsively closed all open applications and let the phone rest on his chest, the unsupportive black screen hidden front down.

He had barely eaten all day, but he was not hungry. The sun was setting behind Saint Petersburg’s skyline and the room was becoming increasingly darker with every minute that passed. As Victor tried to slow his erratic breathing, the low-battery phone lying flat on his chest began to bleep for a source of electricity, urging its owner to stop despairing about his lost love and to start taking care of the household chores.

For months thereafter, Victor carried on with his life, a lonely existence filled with bouts of depression and feelings of emptiness, redeemed only by the moving constancy of his dog’s affections. No wrongdoing on his part could justify the torture of being teased with the greatest joy a person could possibly experience in order for it to be dangled way from his grasp and for him to be left with the greatest sorrow: to love a soulmate and for your love to be an inconvenience to them.

On the top of it all, the whole world imagined him to be placed at some kind of personal high, while instead he was stuck at a personal low. The speculation surrounding his romantic life never ended and he never made an attempt to make it end, because approaching the subject was too painful and, even more so, doing it publicly. He didn’t share the url of his new blog outside of his closest circle. The loss of the platform he had used to communicate with his fans was, if nothing, the perfect excuse not answer any questions concerning his unfortunate circumstances.

One thing was left to him, the only thing he had ever been successful at and that was his skating. But skating too had now become bittersweet and inextricably tied to Yuuri. He could dance on the ice alone, but his heart yearned to dance with his soulmate, and, when he did dance alone, he could only do so with sadness.

His free skate for the season ‘Stammi Vicino’ acquired a whole new meaning; the Italian lyrics of the music he had specifically commissioned for his program, begging the singer’s beloved to stay close and not to leave, were now wretchedly relatable to his own situation. The aria turned into a cry against rejection, a plea for a connection. It could as well be said that on the last day of the World Championships a price was paid by the winner; with his desperate performance, Victor bought the most impactful presentation he had ever delivered. For the fifth consecutive year, a gold medal hung around his neck.

Yuuri had not qualified for the competition and was rumoured to be retiring. They might never see each other again.


	2. Leftovers

“Has long-time bachelor Victor Nikiforov finally found his soulmate?” The press asked, already spurring their readers to guess their identity. Yet, while millions of users speculated on his relationship status, his number one fan, the very Yuuri Katsuki — who since his disappointing placement at the Grand Prix Final had locked himself away from social media — remained oblivious as to the whole commotion, originating no less than a few obstacles to the conjunction of the predestined couple.

It had been the first time that Yuuri had qualified to enter the Grand Prix Final and he still couldn’t accept the outcome of the competition. During his free skate, he had fallen at each attempt to land a jump and, as a consequence, he had precipitated directly to the sixth and last place. The resounding defeat had been due to pressure-induced binge-eating just before the match, but really primarily to the death of the family dog.

To exacerbate the state Yuuri’s mental distress, this disastrous display of his impaired skating abilities had happened right before the eyes of his hero Victor Nikiforov, who, despite having a reputation for always aiming to surprise his audience, consistently succeeded in conquering the highest step of the podium and confirming the public’s predictions regarding the gold medallist. He felt like an idiot for thinking he could finally meet his idol and compete in the same playing field.

The junior champion from Russia, also called Yuri and a rink mate of his idol, had even followed him in the bathroom after the competition to warn him that the following year he would be competing in the senior division and that there was no room in the sport for two Yuris, advising him to retire already.

A couple of weeks later, he also completely bombed Japanese nationals, for which he was considered the frontrunner. The two consecutive losses prevented him from qualifying for Four Continents and the World Championships, resulting in an early closure to his season.

Unsure about the future of his skating career, he tried to focus on his studies, with the aim of graduating from college within a few months. He was already a year behind schedule because of his contemporary aspiration of making it into the ranks of international figure skating. On top of that, moving away for college and training abroad, had slowly been draining a hole in his family’s finances, so that it became quite urgent for him to get his degree and attract the attention of a more considerable base of sponsors.

Social media was the first distraction he got rid of. The unending stream of information coming from his fandoms and acquaintances was enough to occupy an unhealthy part of his day and combined with his inclination to produce long pieces of meta on his favourite video games, constituted a serious threat to the achievement of the goals he had set for himself. Among the things he would miss the most were the updates from Victor Nikiforov’s bluehll, especially the ones about his poodle Makkachin, even when these would have inevitably reminded his of his own late poodle, which he had named after Victor and had got after reading in a magazine that his idol had adopted one. But it just had to be done. He uninstalled all the main social media apps from his phone and stepped into a world where he could breathe an air free of notifications.

It didn’t take long for his former roommate and rink-mate, Phichit Chulanont, diligent social media poster and rapt dashboard observer, to notice his absence. Yuuri had recently moved out of Detroit, where they had been training under a shared coach and, since his departure, he hadn’t made a significant effort to have a chat with his friend. For that, he felt a tad of guilt.

As he was trying to keep awake in front of an open textbook, a bleeping sound coming from his phone roused him from his drowsiness. He rubbed his eyes and cleaned his glasses to read the contents of the text that had just arrived. It was from Phichit.

“Yuuri! I can’t believe you are making me text you. Why are you not answering on the messenger chat?” He’s friend lamented.

“Oh, sorry.” Yuuri typed. “I really haven’t been keeping up with my chats, I haven’t seen your messages. Did you need something in particular?”

“Yes and you know what!”

“Let me think…” Yuuri couldn’t come up with anything except the fact that he had hardly stayed in touch and for that he had already apologized.

“It has something to do with a certain silver haired skater… Listen, I know it took me a while and I haven’t asked you about it before you left, but couldn’t you just tell me know? Are you going to marry Victor Nikiforov?”

So that was what this was about, Yuuri thought, it was about Victor. He really didn’t want to gossip about his hero after performing that badly right in front of him, still he could see how, after having raved about the his magnificent skating skills and his out-of-the-world good looks in one too many tipsy weekend nights, Phichit would be a bit surprised that Yuuri hadn’t shared his tales of meeting and competing against him at the Grand Prix Final. He could indulge his friend with a short reply, but it had to be one that wouldn’t lead to a longer conversation.

“Ah, ah, the dream!” He ended up writing, after considering other possibilities for a full minute. He was glad Phichit wasn’t there to read the desolate mood behind the digital laugh.

“It took you long enough to tell me that much!” A message came back in the matter of seconds, soon followed by another. “I guess my curiosity will have to rest for a while. Anyway, keep me updated!”

“Yeah, let’s hear from each other soon.”

Talking with Phichit had lifted a burden from his shoulders. Leaving Detroit abruptly, with only a few days of forewarning, had really been weighting on him.

When he put his phone back on the desk, he realized it was past dinnertime. Sleepy as he was, there was no use in attempting to finish his book that night, so he decided to do something that involved physical activity instead and went training at the ice rink near his campus, expecting to find it mostly empty in the hours after dark.

He grabbed a cup of ramen at a nearby food-cart for a quick meal and then made a run for the facility. When he arrived at the rink, he was pleased to discover that he would have the entire arena to his disposal.

At first, he warmed up by practicing simple edges, then he raised his game to try a couple of spins and double jumps. Half an hour later, he had settled on the ice fine enough that he felt comfortable putting on some music and going through a routine. Choosing which one was a different concern altogether. His recent programs were out of question, the memories of his falls at the Grand Prix Final and at Nationals still vividly burning in his mind.

As a kid, he used to copy Victor’s programs with a childhood friend of his. Four years his senior, Victor had at the time already reached international fame as a very promising junior skater and touched the hearts of many young skaters around the world. Grown-up Yuuri had kept the habit of learning the choreography of Victor’s new programs and, although he couldn’t master quite the same level of difficulty for the jumps and, having his own routines to think about, he couldn’t repeat the choreographies enough to complete them with fluidity, they still remained a fun accessory part to his regular training.

He connected his phone to the audio system and put on play Victor’s last free skate, ‘Stammi Vicino’. It was a song of loneliness and longing, the central theme being asking for closeness to the object of one’s affection. No wonder Victor thought he could surprise the audience with a piece like this, since he was one of the most desirable bachelors in the world.

The program was choreographed by Victor Nikiforov himself. It was very elegant and perfectly fitted the mood of the operatic music. Yuuri tried first to do those movements that he remembered from watching Victor performing, then took his phone and examined the rest of the routine from several Yuutube videos.

He was bored of feeling depressed about his failures and wanted to get his love for skating back, just like when he was a kid without the pressure of wins and losses, without the media speculating about his possible retirement at every given opportunity. Dancing on the ice to the sound of forlorn, yet hopeful love and with his reflection in the plexiglas as the only eyes on his performance felt definitively good.

That night, he returned to his dormitory filled with a new energy.

The weeks passed between fulfilling his duties as a student and training for the pleasure of training and, with time, the sadness in Yuuri’s heart for the loss of his dog and the plunge of his career lessened to a manageable degree.

Around the end of February, he received an unexpected text from Christophe Giacometti, a Swiss professional skater he was mildly acquainted with and against whom he had skated at last Grand Prix Final. He seemed to have wanted to keep in touch right after the competition, but his messages had halted not long after.

“Hey, Yuuri… How are you?” Chris’ text said.

“Hi, Chris!” Yuuri answered. “I’m fine really, getting my life back on track. What about you?”

“I’m doing great.” The other said. Yuuri didn’t really know how to keep the conversation going and let the phone momentarily lay around on the nightstand. A few minutes went by, after which he received a longer, perplexing message.

“I know this is rude and that you Japanese folk do not like to talk about it, but what about your soulmate?”

“My soulmate?” Yuuri replied. Come to think of it, that was indeed an invasive question and none of his business. Chris was probably drunk. He decided to skirt around the question. “I don’t really have time for a soulmate right now. I’m pretty much occupied with getting to the end of college.”

“Ah.” The response was dull. “So you have no intention of pursuing Victor?”

Yuuri’s mind screamed at the suggestion. Two things were certain; the first was that Christophe was indeed drunk and the second was that he had let his mouth run too much about his admiration for Victor, which was really inconvenient considering the small degree of separation that now stood between him and his hero. He was seriously risking having Victor becoming aware of his embarrassing crush and he could not allow it. Better close that rumour with decision before it spread any further.

“No, Chris, I’m not interested in pursuing Victor. I respect him a lot and I look up to him as a figure skating legend, but that’s all there is to it.”

“I see.”

This was the last Yuuri heard from Giacometti.

Graduation came in March along with Yuuri’s return to his hometown Hasetsu, in Kyushu, after a five-years-long absence. He was warmly welcomed back by his parents and his sister and he had at last the occasion to pay homage at the little domestic shrine dedicate to his late dog. The Katsuki family run the only remaining onsen in the city; they didn’t make much money and the business didn’t left them with a lot of free time, but they still did all they could to support Yuuri in his career, even when this meant sacrificing part of their moderate income or not being allowed to see their relative for years due to the exorbitant travel expenses.

Yuuri’s mother promised to prepare for dinner a bowl of katsudon, his favourite dish. They all jokingly noted that Yuuri had taken quite a lot of weight since they had last saw him on television for the Grand Prix Final, nevertheless, they encourage him to eat as much as he pleased for the night coming. Yuuri knew that he had not been following the correct regime for a competitive figure skater for a while, but he had yet to decide whether he intended to participate in next season or quit figure skating altogether. After a couple of hours spent catching up with each side’s recent developments between serving this or that guest of the inn, silence crept in the room as if it had been waiting for the earliest opportunity, and Yuuri realized that all the eyes where focused on him. The load of attention caused him to gulp.

“Is there something that who would like to share with us, dear?” His mother said with a sweet smile on her face. His father was also smiling, but his sister was donning a dubious expression.

“We have already been talking about my experience in Detroit all afternoon.” Yuuri laughed away his confusion.

“Your mother means something in particular.” His father intervened.

Yuuri blinked for a few moments.

“If you are referring to my skating,” he said, “I haven’t taken a decision yet.”

His family stared back at him as if that wasn’t the reply they were expecting.

“We never mind our own business, do we?” his sister eventually spoke up. “Go soak in the hot springs and relax.”

That is exactly what he needed to escape the strange air of expectance that had started looming over the hall. The long bath had the double function of taking his mind off the other event that was going to be held that night, the last skate of the World Championships.

He had avoided looking at any news related to figure skating since he had given up on scrolling down his social media accounts, but he was sure Victor Nikiforov would compete in the tournament. If he placed first, that would mark his fifth consecutive win of the title, confirming his status as a living legend.

The hot spring did their job and, for the entire duration of the bath, Yuuri forgot all about his parents’ enquires and the competition. Unluckily, he couldn’t help to be reminded of the latter when, on the way to his bedroom, he passed through the hall, where the TV was on and tuned to the championships. The broadcast showed live footage of Victor Nikiforov getting ready for his performance, rehearsing with elegance the steps of his free skate, which Yuuri himself had been practicing and knew by heart.

Yuuri wasn’t much surprised by the inn screening the event, but he hadn’t anticipated the effect that new footage of his hero would cause on him after a months-long fasting. With his silver hair, pointed chin and long lashes, Victor could pass off as the personification of beauty. Yuuri blushed at his thoughts and scampered to his room.

In five minutes, he was already back in the hall and directed to the front door.

“Oh, Yuuri, where are you going?” Asked his mother.

“Sorry, I’m going to practice for a bit.” He answered, as he run out of the main gate.

“Take care!” His mother cried after him.

The sun was setting on the city of Hasetsu, inundating the road to the Ice Castle with a low-angled purple light. Once he arrived at his destination, he paused inside the door of the building to greet the girl behind the counter.

“Our regulars ours are over.” She said with a professional voice and her back turned, while replacing some used rental skates on the racks. Her tone changed when she realized who had just come in. “Yuuri-kun!”

The girl was Yuuri’s childhood friend Yuuko, with whom he used to copy Victor’s early programs.

She was delighted to see him and allowed him to enter the rink so that he could skate alone. Yuuri took to opportunity to share with her the progress he had done with the ‘Stammi Vicino’ routine.

He positioned himself in the middle of the rink, taking the opening pose, his head casted down. For a few moments, the silence filled the arena, only to the broken by Yuuko’s gasp when Yuuri raised his face and passed his arm over his head as he made a counter clockwise turn, effectively setting off on his way through the program.

Following the sound of the music playing in his and Yuuko’s imagination, he glided and spun over the ice, picking up the rhythm as his own and picking up the leftovers of his once passionate soul to reshape them into a far more powerful version of himself.

He knew that somewhere, at the World Championships, his idol was hearing the same melody and dancing with the same moves, conquering the hearts of the audience and judges alike and earning the right to wear around his neck a well-deserved gold medal.

The aria neared to an end and he entered into the closing combination spin. Fifteen seconds left to merge completely with the music and then come back, come to a halt and lift his crossed arms above his shoulder to simulate the pose of an embrace.

Yuuko’s reaction to the performance was ecstatic.

“That was super cool! A perfect copy of Victor! Awesome! I thought you’d be depressed or something!” She cried, her eyes tearful with joy.

“I was, but I got tired of it, I was thinking-”

He got interrupted by the unexpected appearance of three young girls, popping up right before Yuuko from behind the barrier. They wore outfits of distinctly different colours, but all shared the same body shape and lineaments, giving them away as a set of identical triplets.

“Axel, Lutz and Loop!” Yuuko named them. “Haven’t they grown since you last saw them?”

Yuuri recognized them as Yuuko’s own daughters, who had been but crying, crawling toddlers when he had left Hasetsu City five years earlier. It turned out that, while they had gained the capability to speak, they were still just as noisy as they once were.

“Yuuri, you really did get fat!” Said Axel.

“Are you really retiring?” Asked Loop.

“Do you have a secret soulmate?” Probed Lutz, even more rudely.

“Hey!” Yuuko stopped their questions and remarks with an embarrassed face. “Sorry, my girls are such groupies!”

The girls, nevertheless, kept circling around him armed with fannish excitement and a camera, taking pictures of Yuuri’s every angle.

He left the rink with the pleasure of having reconnected with an old friend and the permission to come to practice at any time. As he adjusted his coat in front of the exit, he heard the triplets cheering at the news of Victor reconfirming his title.

The day after was spent between physical exercise and introspection, till in the evening he was finally able to formulate the nature of his desires. Someday, he wanted to skate again on the same ice as Victor. With that in mind, he was ready to prepare for the night, when a quiet bleep indicated that he had received a text.

It was from Yuuko’s husband.

The message contained a link to a Yuutube video which made a comfortably seated Yuuri jump right into the air with horror.

‘Katsuki Yuuri tried to skate to Victor’s FS program.’ The title said.

Yuuko’s daughters, as her husband had explained, had furtively taken a video of his ‘Stammi Vicino’ performance the day before and uploaded it on the internet. Since then, the video had gone viral and had been reposted on several sites. Yuuri felt like passing away, because he knew that, with such an exposure, Victor would end up watching the video, if he already hadn’t. He felt twice humiliated before the person who had always been a source of inspiration to him; once by failing deplorably at the Grand Prix Final and again by being exposed has someone who thinks they have the numbers to replicate the current world champion’s routine.

Hastily, he logged in his forgotten social media accounts with the intent of reporting the videos and having each upload taken down. Within half an hour, he had sent all requests but one. He was about to log into Bluehll to complete his endeavour, when, after pressing the big blue button under his password, instead than by his activity page, he was met by a digital shower of confetti, falling over a line of words.

“Congratulation, your blog has been deleted!” The words said.

This was unbelievable, Yuuri though. Did this mean that he had become mutuals with his soulmates? Why now? He couldn’t handle any more emotions. He slipped into bed to smother his tears in the pillow, find some rest between the warmth of the covers and forget about all of his problems.

Yuuri woke up in the morning with defeat in his heart. He didn’t have the courage to check what the press had to say about his unskilled imitation, but curiosity led him to check if some of the other skaters had commented on his performance.

Phichit was, as always, too kind in his assessment of his talents and rather inconvenient in the contents of his remarks.

“Woah, Yuuri! Such grace! Is this how you woo Victor Nikiforov?” He had posted on Bluehll.

Christophe Giacometti had made no mention of the incriminating video, but had been apparently vagueblogging about his love life.

“I guess sometimes soulmates are just like that.” Said his last comment.

At last, Yuuri decided that he had at least to check if Victor had had anything to say about the matter. He nervously typed his url in the search bar and waited for his bluehll to load.

A few seconds gone and there was his blog, a stream of recent pictures of Victor with his poodle and nothing about the video.

The relief for not finding any post from his idol disparaging his skating was soon overcome by a disappointing realization. Not that he had expected this not to be the case, he knew he was just a dime-a-dozen skater and nothing compared to the one he looked up to, but Victor Nikiforov’s blog was still there. Victor Nikiforov was not his soulmate.


	3. Restored

Watching the video of his soulmate dancing the program he had choreographed and competed with brought Victor Nikiforov back to life.

When he had first opened Chris’ link to the video, he felt a pang of hurt, misjudging Yuuri’s performance as an act of mockery. His soulmate had not called him after the banquet and he had blocked him at Victor’s one attempt to make contact, so poor intentions on his part were the foremost possibility that surfaced in Victor’s mind.

On the second watch of the video, Victor’s frown had already been replaced by an expression of joy. Yuuri was not mocking him, he was paying him an homage. His carriage was graceful and honest, his movements filled with sentiment and appreciation.

Victor was giddy, nervous and blissful at the same time. He jumped from the couch he had been sulking on and started pacing around the room, changing directions without consistence, with his bent arms shaking at his sides.

It really didn’t matter why Yuuri had been shunning Victor for the last four months. They had once danced together in a foolish night, they had once looked together at the stars. They were soulmates. He was in love and maybe Yuuri was in love too.

Explanations for the past would come later, he was leaving for Japan to be with the one he was meant to, to be his coach and win the next gold medal together.

In the taxi to the airport, Victor changed his private, temporary url back to his original one, which had fortunately been guarded by a fan who had been kind enough to save it and transfer it to him some weeks earlier and who had preferred to remain anonymous, even if he somehow was among the few aware of his current handle. Something good was happening to him and he wanted to share it with the whole world. Very soon, he would be able to post on his blog the pictures of his trip to Japan and the stories he would be living with his soulmate.

Fifteen hours later, he had arrived in Hasetsu and found himself bathing in the hot spring run by Yuuri’s family, waiting for him to return from a brief absence. As he sat alone in the springs, he was at liberty to practice the words he would say and the moves he would make in order to seduce him without getting weirded out looks thrown at him by the other guests.

Finally, Yuuri barged into the small yard where the springs where located. Victor knew that this was the moment he had being waiting for, his opportunity to make a second first impression and charm Yuuri as much as he had charmed him at the banquet. He stood up at the border of the spring, water dripping from his naked body and extended his right arm to Yuuri.

“Yuuri, starting today, I am your coach!” Victor said suavely. “I’m going to make you win the Grand Prix Final.”

And then he winked for good measure, making Yuuri shriek dramatically.

 

It was but in the morning of the same day that Yuuri had been despairing over the proof of his ardent admiration towards his competitor Victor Nikiforov having been made public.

Against all possible previsions, his idol had appeared in his house like an unforecasted snowstorm, offering to be his coach during his newly announced season off.

The first hours of Victor at the inn were awkward. He bathed in the springs, fell asleep in the hall and ate his mother’s katsudon, complimenting the quality of every service he had been offered.

When Yuuri accompanied Victor to the room he would be staying in and the two found themselves alone together, the latter started coming onto the former with all sorts of generic questions concerning his life. Yuuri had a hard time replying or doing anything other than blush and attempt to maintain his composure, as Victor’s natural charms and inherently seductive personality were incredibly apt at disabling his mental faculties. It was certainly unfortunate to have a crush on the kind of person who flirts with the same ease with which they breathe.

At night, Yuuri managed to escape to his room and from the whirlpool of emotions he had been feeling since Victor’s arrival. Only after calming down between his sheets, he could finally examine how the situation had impacted on his mood. He was decidedly behaving shier than usual, yet he couldn’t deny how every time Victor would look into his eyes or brush his hand or talk with his family, he felt pervaded by a sense of true happiness. They had barely ever spoken, because he had always put him on such a high pedestal, but if Victor had chosen to move to Japan to coach him, he must have seen something worth in him and he was going to give this chance to train under him everything he had.

Darkness brought to Yuuri’s mind another pressing issue that he had forgotten due to the turbulent events of the day. Who was his soulmate? He knew it couldn’t be Victor, as his blog hadn’t been deleted. Having him as both his coach and his soulmate would have been like winning the lottery twice. It had to be someone who had followed him after he had followed them, since they became mutuals only recently and he hadn’t used social media since December. He couldn’t think of any person who he had been following and who hadn’t been following him back to whom he felt romantically inclined. Then again, he was going by the sheer power of casually memorized information; the list of the people with this characteristic had been erased along with his blog.

Strangely enough, he couldn’t master an adequate degree of care for the identity of his soulmate. He wasn’t really expecting to connect with them so soon, when his main concerns were to succeed as a competitive figure skating and getting on the same level of proficiency as Victor’s. There was also nothing he could do about it; his soulmate, on the contrary, must have been aware of his identity, given that their blog must have been deleted as soon as they followed Yuuri. If they were interested in having a relationship with him, they would eventually seek him out.

Having, albeit temporarily, sorted this issue, he conceded himself to sleep.

The next day, Yuuri escorted Victor for a guided tour of Hasetsu.

They first visited the skating rink, where Victor put on his figure skates and showed off his trademark quadruple flip jump for the joy of Yuuri, Yuuko and her whole family. Later they went to train up on Hasetsu’s highest hill, where the city’s castle was located. Yuuri began his one-legged jumping exercises on a bench inside the castle’s gardens, while Victor sat next to him. In his inactivity, his companion started once again to probe into his private life, firing question after question.

“Are you in a relationship?” He asked.

“No.” Yuuri answered sheepishly.

“Any past relationship?”

“No comment.”

“How many soulmates do you have?”

“Victor, that is very rude to ask!” Yuuri noted.

“Let’s talk about me, then.” Victor said enthusiastically. “I only have one soulmate-”

“Stop!” Yuuri cried. He didn’t want to hear about his crush’s soulmate, especially while being in such an uncertain situation with his own.

Victor sighed and sagged into the bench further, until the castle suddenly revived his touristic interest and the day passed by between one attraction and the other, taking pictures and commenting on the differences between Russian and Japanese architecture.

Before separating for the night, Victor stopped Yuuri in the corridor leading to his bedroom.

“Hey, tomorrow training starts at nine.” He said, somewhat lacking that aura of confidence that he continuously exuded.

“Ok,” Yuuri smiled. “I’ll put the alarm at seven. Goodnight.”

Yuuri made to walk towards his door, but Victor’s voice made him turn around again.

“If for any reason you need to communicate with me when we are not close by,” he said, “you have my number in your contacts list.”

He gently patted Yuuri’s shoulder and then retired to his own room.

Once he was alone, Yuuri checked his phone and he indeed found a contact named ‘Victor’ which he did remember having. His coach had evidently registered his number while he had been distracted with his training.

In the morning, while waiting in the backyard with Victor’s poodle for his owner to finish his breakfast, Yuuri went through the pictures they had taken the day before to set one as the new contact’s profile picture, making sure to choose one where Victor was posing with the dog. He then scrolled down the contact’s details to see if there was anything he might want to add. He was surprised by the content of the last line in the page: ‘Unblock this Caller’.

‘Look at this, Makkachin.” He said. “The blocking bug is real after all and on telephone too. People have been saying for a while on Bluehll that they find on their blocked list users that they don’t remember having blocked, sometimes even mutuals. I had experienced the unfollowing bug first hand, but I thought the blocking bug at least was just a rumour. I would never block Victor.”

The dog stared at Yuuri with contentment.

“Are you teaching Makkachin some Japanese?” Victor shouted from the hall.

“She’s a good pupil.” Yuuri shouted back.

“Are you going to teach me some Japanese too?”

Yuuri smiled, but he didn’t reply. Instead, he reversed the block option in Victor’s contact page and then pressed the call icon. He heard a phone ringing inside and, when the tune stopped, he heard a voice coming from his speaker.

“Did you want to have a more intimate conversation?” Said Victor with a suave tone.

“We were just bothering the costumers by shouting so loud.” Yuuri teased.

“So, are you giving me those Japanese lessons?”

“Starting today, I am your coach.”

 

An uneventful week passed where Victor and Yuuri had the time to get to know each other better. Had Victor known last December that in March he would be training, exploring and bathing with his soulmate, he would have spared himself four months of torment.

Even if at first Yuuri had been shy and distant, after a few days, they were able to carry a conversation without him shutting down all of a sudden. Going by his family’s accounts, it seemed that Victor had misjudged on the low side how big of a fan of his Yuuri had been for the entire length of his career. Taking this into consideration made his soulmate’s introverted behaviour a bit more understandable.

Yuuri had even unblocked his phone number and called him a couple of times. Whatever reasons had made him decide to block him initially, they were no longer standing and he didn’t need to know them.

For a full week, life had been peaceful. Then Yuri Plisetsky arrived to Hasetsu.

Yuri Plisetsky was a young skater of fifteen who had been training under the same coach as him back in Saint Petersburg. He was the current junior world champion and he had been planning to move in the senior division in the upcoming season.

Victor had been going through a sensual routine he had designed with Yuuri in mind as a performer after dancing with him at the banquet and discovering he was his soulmate, when the other Yuri showed up at Hasetsu’s ice skating rink, raging about Victor’s departure from Russia. It turned out that Yuri had followed him to Japan because some years earlier he had promised the kid that he would choreograph a program for his senior debut if he managed to win the world championships without using any quads, which he proceeded to do just the season before.

“Sorry, sorry.” Victor apologized cheerily “I totally forgot, but you knew I was the forgetful type, right?”

“Yeah, I’m painfully aware of that.” Yuri grumbled. “But a promise is a promise! You’ll choreograph my new program, Victor! Let’s go back to Russia!”

The request shook Victor momentarily and he could see that his Yuuri, who had been listening to the exchange, had been taken aback as well. Nevertheless, he readily produced a solution to the problem.

“Okay, I’ve decided!” He exclaimed. “Tomorrow, I’ll choreograph a program for both of you to the same music I planned to use for my short program.”

Both Yuris protested in confusion, not wanting to skate to the same music and choreography, so Victor had to further clarify.

“This piece had several arrangements. I was trying to decide which one to use. I’ll think of a different program for each of you, of course. I’ll reveal the programs in one week and then you’ll compete to see who can surprise the audience more. Your performances will be filmed and posted on my Bluehll. The one who gets more notes within four hours gets to keep me as his coach!”

This would serve to motivate both skaters, but Victor had no doubt that his Yuuri would win the face-off.

 

Yuuri did not want to be punished for losing, but he also knew that he had to prove to be worthy of Victor’s time. Victor had assigned to him a flamenco-inspired piece about Eros, the sensual kind of love, while giving to his rival a matching piece, sounding right out of a cathedral and centred on Agape, the unconditional kind of love.

The theme of Yuuri’s program seemed the perfect excuse for Victor to behave even more flirty than he normally did. Between a wink in his direction here and a hand cupping his chin there, Yuuri was at risk of swooning over his coach’s attentions on a daily basis.

Victor had asked them to think what their theme represented for them.

Yuuri could definitively see a story in his program. A playboy comes to a certain town and bewitches the women left and right. He decides to pursue the most beautiful woman in town, despite her being intended to another soulmate, but she isn’t swayed. Then, as they play the game of love, she finds it difficult to make the right choices and ends up falling for him. Then he casts her aside, as though he’s tired of her, and he goes off to the next town, leaving her alone and on bad terms with the soulmate she had ditched.

Still, Yuuri couldn’t see himself in the role of a playboy chasing women. Victor had suggested that during the program ha could think about his own soulmate, making Yuuri extremely embarrassed, as, not only he had no idea about who his soulmate was, but at the moment he couldn’t also seem to care one bit.

As Victor wouldn’t relent about the competitor’s need to identify a source for their assigned kind of love, one evening, after several tough hours of training, a very sleepy and famished Yuuri came up with an idea he immediately regretted.

“I get it now!” He shouted in a sudden and short-lived moment of wakefulness. “Katsudon! That’s what Eros is to me.”

Victor looked initially baffled, but decided they could go with it, making sure to subtly tease him about his choice throughout the preparation for the face-off.

The other Yuri, jokingly nicknamed Yurio by his sister to avoid the troubles brought by being around two people sharing a name, was an insolent teenager with the worst attitude to interpersonal relationships and had as much difficulty in finding his Agape as Yuuri had in finding his Eros. Technically, he had easily gotten the hang of Victor’s choreography, but emotionally his greed remained too evident. He was more concerned by the idea of winning a gold medal in his first year as a senior than about the quality of his presentation. Moreover, he was especially antagonistic towards Yuuri.

“I did not come here only to have my program choreographed.” He growled one day during training. “You don’t deserve Victor’s time and I want to prove that to him.”

Victor’s attempts to help the kid express the idea of Agape invariably failed. A day learning discipline at a Japanese temple and a standing-up session under the jet of a cold waterfall increased, if anything, his impatient spirit.

Yuuri wasn’t particularly happy of being unfriendly towards Victor’s young rink mate, so, the day before the start of the challenge, he tried to spend some time with him by asking be taught how to land a quadruple Salchow jump. During these hours, his rival seemed to warm up to him just a little, enough to admit that he was not so bad after all.

That day, Victor also declared that the kid looked like he had finally found his Agape, without further enquiring on the object of his unconditional love.

As far as the costumes were concerned, Victor let them pick one of their choice from his old outfits, which had been specifically shipped to Japan for this purpose. Yuuri chose a black outfit from Victor’s junior days. His previous owner declared it to have been designed with the aim to suggest both the male and female genders at once, by virtue of his then lengthy hairstyle and of a marked discontinuity which parted the costume in two distinct halves. While the left side consisted of a simple bodysuit, the right side remained partly transparent, was fitted with a half skirt and sported a curvier pattern.

The costume gave Yuuri an idea on how to improve his performance. If he couldn’t properly play the part of the playboy, he could well see himself in the part of the enamoured lady set on seducing him and he incorporated this element in the subtleties of his program.

At last, it came the time to film the two short programs and let them be judged by masses of the internet.

Yuri Plisetsky went first. His performance was ethereal and he would definitively rank among the top senior division skaters, but he still couldn’t completely match his mood to the theme behind his program. More work had to be put into the representation of Agape.

Then it came Yuuri Katsuki’s turn. Before taking the ice, he impulsively took Victor into an embrace.

“I’m going to become a super tasty katsudon,” he said, mustering all the confidence that he had. “so please watch me!”

Yuuri was determined to win this competition and to have Victor stay in Hasetsu as his coach and friend. As the music started, Yuuri knew who he was dancing for. His expert footwork nailed the seductive step sequences. His jumps weren’t all perfectly landed, but they were all scheduled in the last half of the program, raising their level of difficulty. Overall, it was an extraordinarily enticing performance, truly evocative of the powers of Eros.

The two video were posted on Victor’s blog and, within four hours, Yuuri Katsuki’s Eros had twice as many notes as Yuri Plisetsky’s Agape, making the former the winner of the competition.

Yurio packed his things and tried to leave Hasetsu without proper send-offs, but Yuuri noticed his absence and caught up with him on his way to the train station.

“Yurio, hang-on!” He shouted, running after him. “Are you not even going to say goodbye to Victor.”

“You can say goodbye to him for me.” He answered uninterested.

“Even if I won,” Yuuri tried to hold his attention, “Everyone who saw your performance thought it was amazing.”

“Cut the compliments, Katsudon. I’ve got the choreography for my short program, so I’m going back to Russia and you can keep Victor.” He paused for some seconds, but it was clear he was not done talking. “Do not think I haven’t seen the moves you’re pulling out around Victor. I do not want you to waste his time with your games. How you’ve behaved, it was a shitty way to treat your soulmate.”

These words pierced through Yuuri’s heart like a cold blade. He remained paralyzed on the spot, unable to focus on Yurio’s departing figure. What had he been doing? Letting himself being flirted with and unashamedly flirting back when he had a soulmate with which he had already somehow connected? He run back to the inn and shut himself in his room.

He had up until now turned a blind eye to the fact that his soulbound had manifested, because he was too busy lusting with both of them after his coach and idol. He had found excuses not to think about his soulmate, about who they could be and how they could get in contact. Considering that he had practically abandoned social media for months, it was perfectly plausible that his soulmate hadn’t found a mean to reach him.

Whatever he felt for Victor, he would have to put it aside and keep their relationship professional. After winning the Grand Prix Final, he would start looking for his soulmate and his memories of Victor would be all he will have left of their time together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter is probably going to come out by the end of the weekend. Let me know if you like it so far!


	4. Deleted Again

In the period leading to the face-off between the two Yuris, Victor had woven his way through his soulmates’ life. Yuuri would no longer blush with embarrassment at his every touch and he had come to welcome his advances with some teasing of his own.

All had changed after the competition. Their training session had taken a worryingly taciturn turn and Yuuri would often skew away from contact with Victor, making him wonder whether he had crossed a boundary which made his soulmate feel uncomfortable.

The short program had been choreographed and tested, still the free skate was entirely up for production. Victor wanted to let Yuuri have more input in the creation of this program and urged him to choose the music for the performance. According to Yuuri’s previous coach, the only time he had come forward with a piece of his choice, he had backtracked his proposal at his coach’s first signs of scepticism regarding its winning potential. Victor had asked to hear this piece and fund it himself a bit weak.

The days passed and Yuuri neglected to select a music around which they could build his free skate. This lack of resolution on Yuuri’s part, in association with his recent distant behaviour, eventually ended up unnerving Victor and taking a toll on his patience.

“Why can’t you trust your own decision?” He scolded Yuuri during training, after the umpteenth communication that he had yet to make up his mind about the piece. “Try to take inspiration from something happening in your life. There’s your videogames, your family, your soulbond…”

“Huh?” Yuuri barked at the last element.

Victor’s eyes opened in surprise just as his eyebrows frowned in hurt.

“Sorry!” Yuuri stammered, after he realized the tone he had used. “Right now, It’s just that I-”

“Oh, right. You don’t want to talk about that.” Victor concluded.

At the end of practice, Victor sorely regretted having pushed the topic onto Yuuri and wanted to try making amends by doing something nice together. An outing was offered and refused, a bath in the springs received the same treatment and Yuuri excused himself to bed for the rest of the evening.

The next morning, Yuuri failed to show up at practice and Victor had to return to his family’s inn in order to check up on him. He found him sitting on the bed, under the covers and rigid with nervousness, muttering to himself in Japanese. Feeling responsible about the state of their relationship, he collected all the cheerfulness he could master and, without mentioning Yuuri’s absence at the rink, he gently invited him to take a walk by the ocean.

They sat on the beach, Makkachin settled under Victor’s arm in the space between the two of them. The seagulls’ cries reminded him of the ocean in Saint Petersburg. He told Yuuri so, trying to close the gap between them with the help of small talk, but his soulmate had something else in mind.

“There was a girl in Detroit who was really pushy and kept talking to me.” He started, without looking at his companion. “She followed me on every social media, but I never her followed back. One time, a rink mate got into an accident and I was in the hospital waiting room with that girl, pretty torn up with worry. She hugged me to comfort me and, after a few seconds, she told me that she thought I might be her soulmate. I shoved her away without thinking. She asked me why I didn’t give her the opportunity to prove herself as my soulmate, but I think that the soulbond should be something you feel and recognise outside of its physical manifestation and I didn’t feel that way for her.”

By the end of this little revelation, Yuuri’s hand has slipped inside Makkachin’s fur, his finger casually intertwining with Victor’s. Victor took this gesture as a permission to bring about the one subject that had remained undiscussed.

“Yuuri, what do you want me to be to you?” He said. “A father figure?”

“No.” The other murmured.

“A brother, then? A friend?”

Yuuri hummed unconvincingly.

“Then, your boyfriend, I guess.” Victor said lightly. “I can try my best.”

To his disappointment, Yuuri removed his hand from his and stood up alarmed.

“No, no, no, no, no!” He said. “I want you to stay who you are, Victor! I’ve always looked up to you. I ignored because I didn’t want you to see my shortcomings. I’ll make it up to you with my skating!”

Victor couldn’t understand Yuuri’s logic. Did he not feel the soulbond between them or did he just not feel it as a romantic bond? In either case, he would be giving Yuuri exactly what he needed, even if that meant setting apart his desire to have a romantic relationship with him, and that would be his way of showing his love.

 

 

Through all of his life, Yuuri had sensed a missing length in the colourless skein of his existence, a void in his domesticity and he had supposed that void would be, one day, filled by his soulmate. Yet, despite all his best intentions and effort, his life came to a point where said void has been accidentally filled by someone else entirely, someone to whom he was not tied by a soulbond, but for whom he had the utmost admiration.

For a few insane moments, I had entertained the idea that Victor Nikiforov could be his second soulmate, a fantasy quickly debunked by their various persisting social media accounts, about which Victor had often been mentioning becoming his mutual and having a good time checking his old posts, making it clear that the follow hadn’t triggered their deletion.

With no room left in his life and sentiments to spare for his one and only soulmate, Yuuri found himself reviewing all the beliefs that he had held during his youth. He had never been an especially romantic person, in fact, while growing up, all of his love had been devoted to skating, and, as a consequence, to the hero who in his view represented the apex of the sport. Nevertheless, he came from a culture attached to tradition, under which he had failed to question the commitments that were expected as a result of the soulbond.

When, after the face-off against Yuri Plisetsky, he had sworn to fight his feelings towards Victor, he had found it a challenging, yet reachable objective, and his determination had been facilitated by his coach’s annoyed reaction at his avoidance. This plan, however, became increasingly more difficult to follow after Victor’s approach to the situation suddenly made a 180° turn and he became for Yuuri a stronghold of comfort and support.

Although his flirty advances had come to a halt, he never failed to shower Yuuri with encouragements and kindness, bringing light and joy in his reality on a daily basis. Ironically, after being the object of such affections, it was Yuuri who had a hard time keeping his eyes and his hands off the other’s figure.

What were the promises of Bluehll’s confetti compared to the certainties of their already-existing partnership?

With the emergence of Victor’s unconditional support, resurfaced all of Yuuri’s escaping resolution. He was able to have the previously discarded piece redone for his free skate, which he decided to choreograph together with his coach.

“Have you chosen the theme for this season?” Victor asked him one day before practice.

Yuuri lowered his gaze, reluctant to give a full answer.

“What is it?” Victor came to his help.

“The theme is “on my love.” Yuuri finally said with resolve and a slight blush.

“That is the best theme. Perfect.”

Spring passed and summer came, with all its prospects of relax and frequent outdoor activities. In truth, Yuuri’s intensive training severely limited his leisure time. Still he was allowed at least one day off during the week, in which he would often go with Victor at the beach or travel with him to a nearby city.

In this months, Yuuri’s perspective of Victor entirely strayed from the hero-worshipping crush he had developed as a teenager and he came to view his coach as a beloved friend and part of his family.

They had fallen into functioning in complete synchronization, doing almost everything together, a partnership encompassing both their professional and personal life. The physical boundaries between them had also gradually been forgotten in favour of the intimacy derived from sitting contentedly close to each other or resting one head on the other’s shoulder.

Yuuri did not doubt that the emotions brewing inside of him were feelings of love and a desire for romance. Despite understanding his inclination, he knew that, even if he could allow himself to take his fate into his hands and disregard the evaluations of the soulbond to pursue a relationship outside of it, he could not expect Victor to do the same and take him as his lover when he had already a soulmate of his own.

Victor had proposed that, were Yuuri to be invited to perform at an exhibition gala, he could skate to his former free skate music ‘Stammi Vicino’, the song that had brought them together. Yuuri received the proposal positively and the program had become an integral component of their practicing hours. Sometimes Yuuri would go through the routine alone, but, more often than not and with an increasing regularity, he and Victor would skate the program as a couple, converting the choreography from that of a single performance to that of an ice dance.

Along with the new and old programs, Victor had been teaching Yuuri the quadruple jumps that had been missing in his repertoire. Yuuri had secretly been practicing the quadruple flip, Victor’s signature moves, harder than the others. In order to surprise his coach, when he felt confident about his ability to complete the jump, he inserted a quadruple flip near the end of a run of his free skate, landing it correctly. Incredulous, Victor ditched his skate guards and dashed towards Yuuri, who stood still at the centre of the rink in his closing pose. For a moment, it seemed to Yuuri that he was going to collide against him, but Victor ultimately slowed, put his hands under Yuuri’s armpits and pushed him up into the air. Yuuri’s hand instinctively found support on the other’s shoulder.

“Victor, you lifted me!” Yuuri cried after some seconds.

“This was the only thing I could think of to surprise you more than you’ve surprise me.” Victor said with a timid smile, after lowering him back on the ice.

“Really?” Yuuri murmured.

They hugged on the spot for a full minute, unable to find a reason to separate from each other.

That evening Yuuri retired to his room pretty early, fatigued by the repetitions of his quads. Makkachin was hiding under the covers beside him, already lost to the realm of dreams. He run a hand through her soft fur and sighed in the pillow, thinking about the expression on Victor’s face after he had landed the quadruple flip.

His reveries where interrupted by a rather quiet knock at his door.

“What is it?” He asked.

“Yuuri, are you asleep?” Victor’s low voice asked in turn from behind the wooden barrier.

“Not, yet.” Yuuri replied.

“Is Makkachin with you? I can’t find her anywhere else.”

“She’s here.”

“Ok. Goodnight, Yuuri.” Victor whispered, taking leave.

“Wait.” Yuuri said. “I’ll wake her up, so you can take her.”

“No!” Victor protested, opening the door and stumbling in the darkness towards the bed to stop Yuuri from rousing the dog. “It wouldn’t do to wake her up when she’s sleeping so peacefully.”

“She’s your dog. It is not right that I keep her to myself at night.”

“We can share.”

Yuuri could feel the mattress lowering at the side of the bed as Victor sat on the edge to extend an arm over his body and scratch his dog on the back.

“I’ll make some room for you.” Yuuri said before he could think about the implications of his offer.

“Are you sure? Your bed is a bit small.” Victor hesitated.

“We can all fit in it if I scoot over a little.”

Victor removed his shoes and climbed under the covers. Predictably, he had trouble positioning himself inside the bed.

“Maybe if you turn around and I curve my body just like yours.” Victor suggested.

“Ok.” Yuuri muttered very quietly.

Moments later, they were spooning one against the other and revelling into each other’s warmth. Yuuri trembled when Victor’s hand circled his waist. In a bout of boldness, he placed his hand above Victor’s and tangled their fingers together. Although he believed to have handled the situation with chill, he was completely unprepared to digest the monologue that his companion was about to unleash.

“You know,” Victor breathed on his neck, “I never know what you want this to be, I never know how I should act around you. I’m always afraid that my behaviour will suddenly make you uncomfortable and that you will shut me out of your life. From the first moment I laid my eyes on you, I was pervaded by deep feeling of kinship, so tangible that I could only wonder how could it be that you and I had been, before that competition, nothing more than strangers. At times I feel like my affection is reciprocated, at others I feel like you received it as a burden and that you’d rather be spared any interaction outside of our coach-student relationship. And it occurs to me that you are not aware of my stance on soulmates, so I’m just going to tell you what I think about it, before our bond risks of being damaged any further. I don’t think soulmates should necessarily pursue a romantic or physical relationship, I think that people should be free to choose who they get to spend their life with. We are free to choose whether we want a relationship with our soulmate or not and, if you want me at your side, I’ll be there for you, while, if you’d rather be with someone else, I’ll be happy for you.”

Yuuri couldn’t believe the words that had just come from Victor’s mouth. Was he really saying that, just like him, he didn’t care about his own soulmate? Was he saying that he wanted to be with him instead?

Yuuri turned around and took Victor’s head in his hands, flattening his body against his.

“Do you mean it?” Yuuri whispered with tears in his eyes. “Do you not mind if we don’t follow the path laid by the soulbond?”

“I don’t mind, my dear Yuuri.” Victor’s voice sounded almost broken. “Be our path whatever you want it to be.”

At these words, Yuuri could not help but push his lips against Victor’s and luxuriating in the feeling of their bodies merging with one another. Between his arms, Victor went from rigid to limp and pliable, equally unable to resist a kiss that would accompany them till the silence of the night reclaimed their conscious minds.

Yuuri’s rest was eventually broken by an Eastern-European sounding tune coming from a phone laying around on the floor by his bed. Drowsy and puzzled, he picked up the device with the aim to terminate the disturbing noise. The tune came to a halt when Yuuri brushed his thumb over the screen, though he was positive he had failed to hit any concrete button.

After the initial confusion, he noticed that neither Victor nor Makkachin were lying on the bed with him and that some faint rays of sunshine were already entering through the gaps in the curtains. According to the clock on the phone in his hand, it was but six in the morning. The time was the only information Yuuri could understand by looking at the menu, as the phone’s system language had been set to Russian.

He understood that he had just been woken up by Victor’s early alarm, which was likely to resume ringing in a few minutes, since the sound had stopped without Yuuri choosing the turn-off option, thus activating the snooze mode.

Yuuri tried to make his way to the clock app to prevent the alarm from ringing again, but he involuntarily ended up in the photo gallery. There, the preview for one of the folders bewildered him so that he felt compelled to click on the icon and check the pictures inside.

Before his eyes, there where shots taken of his own drunk self, pole dancing half-naked in a room full of people, skin to skin with an equally uncovered Christopher Giacometti. That must have been the night of the banquet after the Grand Prix Final, where, stricken by grief and defeat, he had drunk one glass of champagne too many and blacked-out the memories of the entire gathering.

Very quickly, a seed germinated in Yuuri’s mind. He remembered Chris being annoyed at his crush on Victor during winter, he remembered Chris commenting about his soulmate in March, after the video of him dancing to Victor’s program went viral on the internet. And now he discovered that before his blog had got deleted, he had had a night of wild pole dancing with the very man. Every piece fell together to indicate one logical conclusion: Christopher Giacometti was his soulmate. Even worse, Christopher Giacometti was his soulmate and Victor knew.

Yuuri was furious. One thing was to conjointly decide to get into a romantic relationship despite being soulbound to other people, a totally different thing was to convince the other to make such decision while withholding critical information about their soulmate being a common friend. He bolted from the bed in anger and stomped towards the corridor, only to be met by Victor, followed by Makkachin, right at his threshold.

“Oh, Yuuri, how come you are up so early?” Said Victor with a frustratingly tender voice, caressing his cheek.

“Your alarm woke me up.” Yuuri said, glaring at Victor.

“Sorry! Sorry! I should have at least taken the phone to the bathroom. I’ll make it up to you by holding you until your alarm goes off.”

“No.” Yuuri warded him off. “I want to know why didn’t tell me.”

“About going to the bathroom?” Victor asked, perplexed.

“About Christophe being my soulmate.” Shouted Yuuri.

“Is this a joke?”

“I saw the pictures!” Yuuri continued, hitting an unusually high pitch. “We were pole-dancing together, naked, before my blog got deleted and he has been moping about it ever since. You had the pictures on your phone. You knew all about it and you knew I was drunk enough not to remember anything of the banquet. How could you flirt with me when you knew your friend was my soulmate? How could you take advantage of my crush on you? All this months, you-“

“Lower your voice.” Victor interrupted. “You’ll wake up all the costumers.”

“Fine.” Said Yuuri, throwing the phone in his hand on Victor’s chest. “I did not want to talk to you anyway.”

With that, he slammed the door, turned the key and left Victor locked outside of his bedroom. As soon as he was alone, he grabbed his headphones and sat curled in his bed with music pumping in his ears.

And he didn’t even like Chris!

 

Victor had never been more befuddled in entire life. Did Yuuri really not remember their night together at the banquet? How could he have failed to notice that Yuuri had been much drunker than he was? Had Yuuri not noticed that their blogs had been deleted on the same day? And, above all, how in the world could he think that Chris was his soulmate?

The events of the past few months and Yuuri’s mood swings started to suddenly make sense. He had not known that Victor was his soulmate, so he perceived his flirting as unsubstantiated dallying, and he had thought of being intended for another, so he receive his advances with guilt. Still… Chris?

Without the confusion that had originated way back in December, Yuuri seemed to be perfectly attuned to their bond, feeling it strongly and desiring to cultivate it. He had to correct this misunderstanding straightaway.

He tried to talk to Yuuri from behind the door, but there was no answer. He sent a text; still there was no answer. He slid a note under the partition; he could see the piece of paper from the gap, lying untouched, its form blocking the sunlight. 

Finally, Victor ventured a look at the keyhole. Fortunately, Yuuri had pulled the key out in his temper, allowing Victor to have a peek at what was happening inside. His soulmate sat on his bed, with his head over his bent knees and his ears covered by headphones. It was evident that there would be no point in trying to find a way to communicate with Yuuri at that moment. He had completely isolated himself.

In the meantime, Victor could arrange a little something to surprise him, in the hope that, in a few hours, all this insanity would be gone and forgotten.

A trip to the store and then he would be back home to implement his plan.

 

Yuuri woke up for the second time that morning when his phone stopped going through his playlist of relaxing piano pieces to lend the audio channel to the alarm. It was his day off, but he had an outing planned with Victor, so he had set the alarm at ten o’clock.

For a few seconds, he couldn’t remember anything that had happened earlier and looked around the room to see if there were any signs of his companions. Then it all came back to mind.

He had thought about it for a long while, before falling back to sleep. He really wasn’t interested in Chris, there was no chemistry there, no matter how hard he would try to make it work, yet Chris clearly seemed to be interested in him. It was a painful situation, but sometimes the soulbond happened to be just dead unreliable and people couldn’t be expected to shape their life following its indications rather than their own ambitions.

However, what Victor had done was hardly forgivable in the course of a few hours. In a partnership, information is shared and decisions are taken together in full understanding of the context in which they are being taken. Victor had shown utter disrespect towards him and his friend.

Yuuri found it difficult to reconcile his idea of a sharp, caring, exuberantly affectionate Victor with the actions that the person who seemed to have taken his place. The revelation was completely out of character. Maybe he was exaggerating the situation in the heat of discovery, maybe he was in denial about having been played, but he couldn’t find it in himself to cut on the spot the connection with the one who he had long considered his inspiration, his mentor and his love. He would process the new state of things with calm and after giving Victor the possibility to explain himself, meanwhile, he would tell his coach that he needed time to think about the future of their relationship.

Silently, Yuuri went out of his room to reach the bathroom, hoping not to meet Victor in his way there just yet. In the corridor, he heard some cheers coming from the main hall and decided to stop by the entrance to see if something important had come to pass.

As soon as he had arrived at the door, his mother caught his eyes and trotted towards him to drag him into the room. A party formed by his closest family and friends exploded in a roar of congratulations.

“Your father and I are so happy for you.” Said his mother.

“You have our blessing and our best wishes.” Said his father. “We look forward to see our son and his soulmate getting to start their life together.”

What? Yuuri looked around the room. Everybody was smiling and trying to get close to have a word with him. Yuuko’s triplets were standing on the table with a colourful felicitating banner and their cameras out. Victor was nowhere to be seen.

It was evident that, some way or another, his family had come to know about his and Chris’ soulbound and was celebrating without a full knowledge of the events.

“How did you find out?” Yuuri asked, defeated.

“Don’t you know?” His mother exclaimed. “We saw the video!”

She pointed at a laptop propped open on the table before his friend Yuuko, who turned the screen around so that he could see its contents.

“This is a reblog, obviously, as the original post is gone.” His friend said, with a big smile, hovering the cursor over the play button.

The preview was a picture of Victor and Makkachin, sitting on their bed, surrounded by flying confetti. The caption read ‘I’m deleting to match with my soulmate.’

Yuuri screamed when Yuuko started the video.

“As many of my fans have been speculating about for the last few months,” Victor’s recording said, his expression unreadable to most, but to Yuuri appearing exhausted, “I became mutual with my soulmate last December and our blogs got deleted. Now, who is my soulmate? He’s the most wonderful person I’ve ever met. He’s a skater, like me, and he is one of the best skaters in the world. You have surely heard of him, because I became his coach early this spring. His name is Yuuri Katsuki. I want to show you some photos of us dancing together the night we got to know each other, at the banquet held at the end of the Grand Prix Final.”

Digital Victor scrambled the sheets to find his phone and directed it at the camera. He thumbed through a collection of shots of the two of them having the time of their life making the dancefloor their own.

“You have to thank little Yurio for indulging me at one o’ clock in Saint Petersburg and sending these pictures, because, since I was occupied dancing at the time, I only have pictures of Yuuri from the event in which I don’t appear. So! I remade my blog some months ago because I’m prone to oversharing, but since my soulmate has yet to remake his, I’m deleting my blog of my own initiative to match with him. See you next level!”

With that, he recovered a confetti popper and shoot the coloured pieces of paper towards the ceiling, letting them fall like a gentle shower over him and Makkachin. Then the video went black. Yuuri was speechless.

“We have been suspecting for so long,” His mother was saying in the background. “but it would have been so rude to bring it up without being told first!”

Yuuri was already running, first towards his phone, then towards the street. Still in his pyjama, he dashed towards the skating rink, the one place — he felt it in his heart — where Victor would retreat in times of emotional turmoil.

With his hands, he hastily scrolled through half a year worth of news concerning Victor’s mysterious soulmate, lately often identified with his person and so confirmed in the articles published during the last hour. He went thought his new texts, most of which were novel length explanations from Victor about the misunderstanding and the rest messages of congratulations, crowned by Phichit’s teasing request to know the date of the wedding.

He arrived at his destination to see Victor spinning in the farthest side of the rink, his figure covered by a small group of younger skaters who were too busy practicing their moves to mind the presence of the current reigning champion.

Yuuri sprinted in his direction and cried his name, making everyone’s head turn. The moment his eyes met with Victor’s, they both started running back to the gap in the barriers surrounding the rink. Yuuri arrived first, using the margin to prepare for his next move. When Victor reached the opening, Yuuri locked his lips in a three thousands GOE kiss jump.

They slipped on the ice and held each other on the cold surface.

“Why didn’t you tell me I was your soulmate?” Yuuri asked.

“I was confused.” Victor answered. “There were times when I thought you wanted nothing to do with me.”

“Why would you think that. I literally love you.”

“For example you did not answer my texts after the banquet and then you blocked my number. I understand that you were too drunk to remember about that evening, but wasn’t blocking me a bit excessive?”

“I never blocked you! What did you sent me?”

“Right now, I really can’t remember.”

Yuuri took his phone and scrolled till the start of his text chat with Victor.

“The first message says ‘woof woof’.” Said Yuuri. “I don’t remember this either.”

They stared at each other in silence for a few seconds, until they started talking at the same time.

“I’m sorry for sending such an idiotic text.” Victor said.

“I know what happened.” Yuuri spoke over him.

Victor waited for Yuuri to continue.

“I named my old dog after you. When I received a text coming from the ghost of my defunct dog, I thought it was a tasteless joke and blocked the number.”

“Again I’m so sorry for sending you such a distressing message.” Victor apologised.

“It’s all forgotten now that we are together.”

“Good, because, now that we are together, I plan to make plenty of other memories we will never want to forget. I’ll get off the skates now, it’s our day off.”

In the afternoon, they were strolling hand in hand by the beach, as originally planned.

“How long are you going to keep your blog deleted.” Yuuri asked.

“As long as you are.” Victor smiled.

“Too bad for the fans that don’t have you at their side,” Yuuri said with a laugh. “because I’m really fine without social media, right now. I want to focus on taking my staking to the next level and winning the Grand Prix Final.”

“Let’s win the Grand Prix Final together then.”

Yuuri felt stronger for Victor’s love and support and he would prove it to himself with a gold medal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had so much fun writing this story and I hope you liked it too (let me know!!!).
> 
> You can find more of my ramblings on tumblr, otherwise see you when I find time to write down one of my other crazy ideas.


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